Category archive: Clinical research

Conflicts of interest

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Adam
Adam Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
and filed under Clinical research Medical ethics Medical writing Statistics   Leave a comment

We are no strangers to conflicts of interest in the world of medical writing. The best known case of this is when a pharmaceutical company has paid someone to write an article about one of their own drugs. The conflict of interest here is obvious. Because it is so obvious, however, journal editors are very well aware of the potential for bias in this situation, so such conflicts of interests are, in the main, transparent and well managed. That doesn’t … Continue reading →

RTFM

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Adam
Adam Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
and filed under Clinical research Medical ethics   Leave a comment

One of the various roles I fulfil is sitting on a research ethics committee. For those unfamiliar with the system, all medical research involving human subjects needs to be reviewed and approved by a research ethics committee before it can take place. We make sure that subjects are not put at unnecessary risk and are properly informed about what they are letting themselves in for. I’ve just been reviewing the applications for my next committee meeting. It’s pretty depressing stuff. … Continue reading →

Interesting new cancer research

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Adam
Adam Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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There’s an interesting story in the news today about some recent cancer research. The research, published in Cell, describes investigation of the ability of various molecules to kill cancer stem cells, and comes up with a promising candidate drug for future research, salinomycin. This is, of course, very early research, so talk of a “breakthrough” would be distinctly premature. Many promising discoveries in the lab fail to make it through to useful treatments in the clinic for a whole host … Continue reading →

CDISC protocol representation model

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Adam
Adam Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
and filed under Clinical research Medical writing   Leave a comment

Those of you who follow such things carefully will know that CDISC have recently released a draft of their new protocol representation model (PRM). The current model is only a draft version, and CDISC are keen to receive comments on the model from as wide a variety of potential users as possible. If you feel you have something to contribute, have a look at the model and let CDISC know what you think. I seem to have been “volunteered” to  … Continue reading →

Two more conferences

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Adam
Adam Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
and filed under Clinical research Medical writing   Leave a comment

This seems to be a busy time of year for conferences, and I have a busy couple of weeks ahead. Continue reading →